I recently read a news story in which police were called to a nightclub because a woman had thrown a man’s cell phone into the Gulf of Mexico. According to the article, 

...the woman...said she had taken the phone and thrown it into the water because she believed the man had used his phone to film her.

The woman was ultimately arrested for theft. 

Several years ago, a woman sitting next to me on an airplane kept talking to me and talking to me and talking to me, even though it was clear that I was trying to sleep. As the woman headed off to the lavatory, I snapped a picture of her and put it on my blog with a caption that read, “No, Mom, really. I don’t want to sleep. We were up at 4 a.m. to catch this flight but please continue telling me about your neighbor Gladys and the problems her poodle is having with his teeth.” Now, in that instance, I don’t really have to worry about being sued since the woman was my mother and considering she can barely check her own e-mail I know the odds are small that she’ll actually find my blog, much less read it. But, this experience and the news article I mentioned have left me wondering about the legalities of taking someone’s picture in public and putting it on your blog. 

From researching the issue on the internet, I learned two things. First, websites produced by lawyers are either incredibly boring; designed to terrify you into believing that the only thing standing between you and the guillotine is the legal advice of the firm Harvey, Gumbo, Fireside, Clipnicky, and Associates; or they utilize some of the cheapest, most outdated stock photos that I’ve ever seen. I swear one featured a woman in a dress that Alma Cogan would have worn in the 1950s. But, more importantly, the second thing I learned is that the issue is filled with a lot of generalities and a great number of exceptions, the stuff that causes lawyers to gleefully see dollar signs twirling and swirling around in their head.

As a general rule, there is no expectation of privacy when you are in public so your picture is fair game. Exceptions would include those times you are in a place where a reasonable expectation of privacy exists: restroom, dressing room, locker room, etc. When you’re on private property that’s open to the public, such as a restaurant, the establishment can prohibit photography. If it doesn’t, you’re fair game. Also, the practice of taking pictures from odd or strange angles such as “upskirting”, defined as taking a picture from underneath a woman’s skirt without her permission, are often prohibited.  

The website, People of Walmart, requests pictures of people shopping at department stores, particularly Walmart, if the pictures meet the following criteria.

Funny looking people, crazy outfits, the creepiest of the creepy, and the ugliest of the ugly will do. 

With the proliferation of such websites and personal blogs has the time come for us to revisit the issue of personal privacy, photography, and public spaces? Or should we just grow a thicker skin and laugh it off even if the joke is at our expense. The author and screen writer, Nora Ephron, recently commented, “...if you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you, but if you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your joke and you're the hero of the joke because you're telling the story."

So, if you happen to see me at Safeway and for some reason I’ve been dumb enough to wear an outfit that has me showing more crack than the Liberty Bell, go ahead and take my picture. Post it to your blog. Chances are that I’ll probably post a link to it on my blog and write a funny story about how I came to be dressed in such an embarrassing and absurd fashion.

But that’s me. 

What do you think the rules should be about taking someone’s picture in public, with or without their knowledge, and posting it to your blog or another website like People of Walmart? Should the rules just be ethical ones or do we need to revise our laws to reflect today’s technology? Should the rules be different if the person being photographed is a child? And, in that instance, I’m not referring to inappropriate photos but cute ones such as a 3-year old eating an ice cream cone at the park or silly ones like a 5-year old picking her nose while she patiently sits in the cart at the grocery store.